New Delhi: A nexus between a coaching institute and an exam centre has come to the fore in a probe into a NEET cheating ‘scam’ in Godhra.
Students — who sat for the NEET at the Jay Jalaram School in Godhra’s Parvadi village on 5 May — were told to fill in as many slots on the OMR sheet as they could and teachers from the coaching institute were supposed to fill in the rest after the answer keys were out, the investigation has revealed. Their parents are suspected to have paid Rs 10 lakh each.
The lid on the ‘scam’ was blown off during a raid at the exam centre following a tip-off by the district magistrate of the city.
The Godhra police then filed an FIR under Indian Penal Code sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy).
The FIR, a copy of which is with ThePrint, revealed that the ‘scam‘ was stopped around 10 am after an inspection by the education department.
The police so far have arrested Parshuram Roy, the owner of the coaching institute — Roy Overseas — in Vadodara; Vibhor Anand, an education consultant; Purshottam Sharma, the Jai Jalaram School principal and city coordinator for NEET centres; Tushar Bhatt, the deputy superintendent of the NEET centre and Physics teacher at the school; and Arif Vora who worked in coordination with Bhatt.
The police are now taking NEET conducting body National Testing Agency’s (NTA’s) assistance to zero down on the students involved.
This comes amid the controversy around an alleged NEET paper leak.
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138 bounced cheques & 8 blank cheques
According to sources, Bhatt, the prime accused in the case, was directly in touch with Roy’s coaching institute. While the coaching institute had 696 students appearing for NEET, Bhatt had roll numbers of at least 16 students whose parents had allegedly paid money to cheat.
“They asked those students to answer whatever questions they knew and submit the rest of the sheet. They would then keep those sheets separately and answer the questions themselves. Whatever was left, they would then tick off after the answer key was uploaded,” Godhra Deputy Superintendent of Police N.V. Patel told ThePrint.
While each student-parent is suspected to have paid Rs 10 lakh for this, investigators have found out that the parents of some students paid over Rs 2 crore to the accused for overseas admissions.
“They took advantage of the time gap between the exam being over and the answer sheets being taken from the centre. Big coaching institutes put the answer key 30 minutes after the exam ended,” said the DSP.
Bhatt would allegedly look after the filling in of the answer sheets.
Anand from Bihar’s Darbhanga would find children to get admitted to Roy’s coaching institute and earn a commission for each such admission. He allegedly also got students from Bihar in touch with Roy Overseas.
Anand, who has been living in Gujarat with his wife, worked as a consultant for overseas education.
The police have recovered WhatsApp chats from Bhat’s phone and found the roll numbers of 16 students exchanged between Roy and Bhatt.
The coaching institute, said the DSP, has been functional for the last 15-20 years.
“They would do seminars in Vadodara and other parts of Gujarat and promised to send students abroad. They would also circulate the same on social media. When they couldn’t send the students, they paid back the advance from the money received from the new students,” the DSP said.
A total of 138 cheques issued by the coaching institute to refund parents had bounced, police sources said.
“They also told some students that they should try for NEET from this particular centre and that they would clear it for them,” the DSP added.
The police have recovered Rs 7 lakh from Bhatt’s car and many cheques at Roy’s office, totalling Rs 2.3 crore. Eight of these cheques were blank.
“Their basic modus operandi was that they would demand a lofty advance of Rs 30-60 lakh, and some parents also gave blank cheques,” a source said.
So far, the police have found no evidence of the accused having links with any past cheating cases.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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